Five members of a Southern California family were killed Saturday when their van was rear-ended by an 18-year-old driver who was later arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, authorities said.
The dead were among seven family members who were in the van, authorities said. The other two ? the 40-year-old female driver and a 15-year-old boy ? were hospitalized in critical condition.
Jean Soriano of California was booked into the Clark County Detention Center after he was treated and released at University Medical Center in Las Vegas, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Loy Hixson said.
The crash happened at about 3 a.m. on Interstate 15 near the Utah line. Soriano's sport utility vehicle struck the van from behind, causing both vehicles to spin out of control and roll near Mesquite, some 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, investigators said.
A 23-year-old passenger in Soriano's SUV was treated at the hospital and released.
Authorities believe Soriano was returning from a visit with family in Utah to his home in California at the time of the wreck, Hixson said. They didn't immediately release his hometown or the names or hometowns of the victims.
Beer bottles were found in the SUV, Hixson said, and troopers performed a blood-alcohol test on Soriano at the hospital. The results won't be known for a couple of weeks, he said.
Hixson said only two of the seven people in the van were wearing seatbelts. The five who were not buckled in were ejected, but one survived.
"Unfortunately, so many in the van weren't wearing seatbelts, and some might have survived had they been wearing them," Hixson said. "We see it so many times where people can survive simply by having a seatbelt on."
The van was carrying a couple, their children and some aunts and uncles, he said. Killed were three men in their 40s, a teenage female and an adult female.
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A grand jury indicted 35 former Atlanta public school educators, including an award-winning former superintendent, on Friday for allegedly conspiring to cheat on standardized test scores to obtain cash bonuses.
Former Superintendent Beverly Hall was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009, the same year prosecutors contend widespread cheating took place.
Hall received a $78,000 bonus that year for improving the school system's test scores, prosecutors said.
"The money she received, we are alleging, was ill gotten and it was theft," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said at a news conference.
Besides Hall, those indicted included administrators, principals and teachers. The 65-count indictment said "test answer sheets were altered, fabricated and falsely certified."
Hall was charged with racketeering, making false statements, theft by taking and false swearing. She and others could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted, Howard said.
A state investigation of test results in 2009 found cheating in 44 of the 56 Atlanta public schools examined. The cheating was prompted primarily by pressure to meet targets in a data-driven environment, according to a investigation conducted by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal's office.
The 2009 cheating was said to include teachers erasing incorrect answers on state standardized tests.
The 2011 state report concluded that there was a "major failure of leadership throughout Atlanta Public Schools with regard to the ethical administration" of the 2009 standardized exams known as the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
Amid the investigation, Hall stepped down after nearly 12 years as superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools. Her successor, Erroll Davis, said on Friday the school system now has extensive training and other safeguards to prevent cheating.
He said 95 percent of the school system's staff was not implicated in the scandal.
Justina Collins, the mother of an Atlanta public school student, told the news conference her daughter had trouble reading yet scored well on the standardized tests.
Collins said when she asked the superintendent about the discrepancy, Hall told her, "Your daughter is simply the kind of person who tests well."
Collins' daughter is now in the ninth grade but reads on a fifth-grade level, Howard told reporters, adding that the real victims of the cheating scandal were the children.
"Her example points out the plight of many children" in the scandal, said the prosecutor.
Richard Deane, Hall's attorney, could not be reached for comment.
MAYFLOWER, Ark. (AP) ? Authorities are working to clean up an oil spill in central Arkansas after a pipeline ruptured.
Mayflower Police Chief Robert Satkowski says an ExxonMobil pipeline sprung a leak Friday afternoon in his small city about 20 miles northwest of Little Rock.
Satkowski says the pipeline has since been shut off. The spill forced authorities to evacuate dozens of homes. Oil spilled onto the road and lawns, but it's unclear exactly how much.
Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Brandon Morris initially said oil had reached nearby Lake Conway, but he later said that was incorrect.
ExxonMobil says it's investigating and working with local authorities in clean-up efforts. The company says the breach was in a pipeline that originates in Illinois and carries crude oil to the Texas Gulf Coast.
FRIDAY, March 29 (HealthDay News) ? Although some parents worry about the sheer number of vaccines babies typically receive, a new U.S. government study finds no evidence that more vaccinations increase the risk of autism.
Looking at about 1,000 U.S. children with or without autism, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found no connection between early childhood vaccinations and autism risk.
Children with autism and those without had the same total exposure to vaccine antigens ? the substances in vaccines that trigger the immune system to develop infection-fighting antibodies.
?This should give more reassurance to parents,? said lead researcher Dr. Frank DeStefano, director of the CDC?s Immunization Safety Office.
The findings, which appear online March 29 in the Journal of Pediatrics, cast further doubt on a link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders ? a group of developmental brain disorders that impair a child?s ability to communicate and socialize.
The first worries came from a small British study in 1998 that proposed a connection between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. A spate of research since has found no link, and the original study was eventually retracted by the Lancet, the journal that published it.
Then came concerns about thimerosal, a preservative once used in certain childhood vaccines (but never MMR) that contains small amounts of ethyl mercury. Again, international studies failed to show a link to autism.
More recently, worries have shifted to the notion that children are getting ?too many vaccinations, too soon.? In the United States, children can be immunized against 14 different diseases by the time they are 2.
DeStefano said his team focused on antigen exposure, rather than just the number of vaccinations, because that gives a more precise idea of the ?immune system stimulation? kids received through vaccines.
A recent survey found that about one-third of parents thought children receive too many vaccinations in their first two years of life, and that the shots could contribute to autism.
But there?s no scientific evidence of that, said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia.
He said it?s understandable that parents might worry. ?You see your baby receiving all these vaccines. It looks like too much. It feels like too much,? Offit said.
But, he said, there?s no biological basis for the idea that vaccines ?overstimulate? the immune system, and that somehow leads to autism.
Every day, babies? immune systems battle many more antigens than are present in vaccines, DeStefano explained. ?Most infants can handle exposure to many antigens,? he said.
The findings are based on 256 children with an autism spectrum disorder and 752 autism-free kids who were matched to them based on age, sex and health insurance plan.
The CDC team found that kids? total antigen exposure in the first two years of life was unrelated to their risk of developing an autism disorder.
That was also true when they considered babies? antigen exposure in the first three months of life, and the first seven months. Nor was there any connection between autism risk and the amount of vaccine antigens children received on any single day.
?This provides evidence that concerns about immune system overstimulation are unfounded,? DeStefano said.
Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said the study ?adds to the existing literature showing no connection between vaccines and autism in large epidemiological studies.?
She added, though, that further research is needed ?to explore whether, in rare cases, a genetic vulnerability might increase susceptibility to vaccine-related side effects, including the triggering of autism symptoms in a genetically and medically susceptible child.?
Both Offit and DeStefano stressed that there is no reason for parents to delay vaccinating their child.
?This is one more piece of evidence to help reassure parents,? Offit said.
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics has information on vaccine safety.
Back at Expand, the folks at Lenovo unveiled the ThinkPad T431s, a unit that embodies an overhaul of the outfit's iconic laptop. The latest issue of our weekly magazine goes inside the process of balancing customer preference, perception and tradition with forward-facing design in order to construct the final model. As far as reviews go, Ableton Push, Sonos Playbar and Dell Latitude 10 all get put through their respective paces to tally up some final grades on each. Moog occupies both Eyes-On and the Q&A, Hands-On speed tests T-Mobile's LTE network and IRL has three more items that we've used on the daily. All of that and much more is a download away on your go-to e-reading gadget.
Dr. Scott Harrington, an oral surgeon in Tulsa, Okla., is being charged for unsafe and unsanitary practices, possibly exposing as many as 7,000 patients to hepatitis and HIV after one patient tested positive for both after a visit to his office. NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman reports.
By Justin Juozapavicius, The Associated Press
The crisp, stucco exterior of an Oklahoma dental clinic concealed what health inspectors say they found inside: rusty instruments used on patients with infectious diseases and a pattern of unsanitary practices that put thousands of people at risk for hepatitis and the virus that causes AIDS.
State and local health officials planned to mail notices Friday urging 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington to seek medical screenings for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Inspectors allege workers at his two clinics used dirty equipment and risked cross-contamination to the point that the state Dentistry Board branded Harrington a "menace to the public health."
"The office looked clean," said Joyce Baylor, who had a tooth pulled at Harrington's Tulsa office 1? years ago. In an interview, Baylor, 69, said she'll be tested next week to determine whether she contracted any infection.
"I'm sure he's not suffering financially that he can't afford instruments," Baylor said of Harrington.
Health officials opened their investigation after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. After determining the "index patient" had a dental procedure about the likely time of exposure, investigators visited Harrington's office and found a number of unsafe practices, state epidemiologist Kristy Bailey said.
"I want to stress that this is not an outbreak. The investigation is still very much in its early stages," Bailey said.
Harrington voluntarily gave up his license, closed his offices in Tulsa and suburban Owasso, and is cooperating with investigators, said Kaitlin Snider, a spokeswoman for the Tulsa Health Department. He faces a hearing April 19, when his license could be permanently revoked.
"It's uncertain how long those practices have been in place," Snider said. "He's been practicing for 36 years."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is consulting on the case, and agency spokeswoman Abbigail Tumpey said such situations involving dental clinics are rare. Last year a Colorado oral surgeon was accused of reusing needles and syringes, prompting letters to 8,000 patients, Tumpey said. It wasn't clear whether anyone was actually infected.
"We've only had a handful of dental facilities where we've had notifications in the last decade," Tumpey said.
The Oklahoma Dentistry Board lodged a 17-count complaint against Harrington, saying he was a "menace to the public health by reasons of practicing dentistry in an unsafe or unsanitary manner." Among the claims was one detailing the use of rusty instruments in patients known to have infectious diseases.
"The CDC has determined that rusted instruments are porous and cannot be properly sterilized," the board said.
Health officials are sending letters to 7,000 known patients but cautioned that they don't know who visited his clinics before 2007. The letters urge the patients to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV ? viruses typically spread through intravenous drug use or unprotected sex, not occupational settings.
Harrington could not be reached for comment Thursday. A message at his Tulsa office said it was closed, and the doctor's answering service referred callers to the Tulsa Health Department. Phone numbers listed for Harrington were disconnected. A message left with Harrington's malpractice attorney in Tulsa, Jim Secrest II, was not immediately returned.
Harrington's Tulsa practice is in a thriving part of town, on a row of some of medical practices. The white-and-green stucco, two-story dental clinic has the doctor's name in letters on the facade.
NBCLatino: You may have Hep C and not know it
According to the complaint, the clinic had varying cleaning procedures for its equipment, needles were re-inserted in drug vials after their initial use and the office had no written infection-protection procedure.
Harrington told officials he left questions about sterilization and drug procedures to his employees.
"They take care of that, I don't," the dentistry board quoted him as saying.
The doctor also is accused of letting his assistants perform tasks only a licensed dentist should have done, including administering IV sedation. Also, the complaint says the doctor's staff could not produce permits for the assistants when asked.
Susan Rogers, executive director of the state Dentistry Board, said that as an oral surgeon Harrington regularly did invasive procedures involving "pulling teeth, open wounds, open blood vessels." The board's complaint also noted Harrington and his staff told investigators a "high population of known infectious disease carrier patients" received dental care from him.
Despite the high-risk clientele, a device used to sterilize instruments wasn't being properly used and hadn't been tested in six years, the board complaint said. Tests are required monthly.
Also, a drug vial found at a clinic this year had an expiration date of 1993 and one assistant's drug log said morphine had been used in the clinic last year despite its not receiving any morphine shipments since 2009.
Officials said patients will be offered free medical testing at the Tulsa Health Department's North Regional Health and Wellness Center.
Related:
Dental chain accused of hurting kids, bilking taxpayers
This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:06 PM EDT
Most commonly associated with such maladies as "mad cow disease" and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, prions are increasingly recognized for their ability to induce potentially beneficial traits in a variety of organisms, yeast chief among them.
Now a team of scientists has added markedly to the job description of prions as agents of change, identifying a prion capable of triggering a transition in yeast from its conventional single-celled form to a cooperative, multicellular structure. This change, which appears to improve yeast's chances for survival in the face of hostile environmental conditions, is an epigenetic phenomenon?a heritable alteration brought about without any change to the organism's underlying genome.
This latest finding, reported in the March 28 issue of the journalCell, has its origins in work begun several years ago in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Susan Lindquist. In 2009, Randal Halfmann, then a graduate student in Lindquist's lab, identified dozens of proteins in yeast that have the ability to form prions. That research greatly expanded the known universe of prion elements in yeast, but it failed to answer a key question: What function, if any, do these prions actually have?
In search of an answer, Halfmann, now a fellow the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and colleagues in the Lindquist lab attempted to exploit the fact that several of the prion-forming proteins they had identified acted to modify transcription of yeast genes. It stood to reason that if they could identify which genes were being regulated, they might be able to determine the prions' function.
"We looked at the five transcriptional regulators that are known to be prions in yeast, and we found that in fact, only one gene in the entire yeast genome was regulated by all five transcription factors," says Halfmann.
That gene, as it turns out, was FLO11, a key player in multicellularity in yeast. Indeed changes in FLO11 expression have been shown to act as a toggle, switching yeast from spherical to filamentous form. Halfmann notes that FLO11, which has been shown to be regulated by epigenetic elements, is also highly responsive to environmental stress. Knowing that the prion form of a protein is essentially a misfolded form of that protein, and that stressful conditions increase the frequency of protein misfolding and prion formation, the scientists began to consider the possibility that the prions themselves might be among the epigenetic switches influencing the activity of FLO11.
The group focused on one transcription factor known as mot3, finding that yeast cells containing the prion form of this factor, [MOT3+], acquired a variety of multicellular growth forms known to require FLO11 expression. This was a clear indication that prion formation was causing the differentiation of the cells and their subsequent cooperation. But what about the stress aspect of the hypothesis?
By testing yeast cells against a variety of stressors, the scientists discovered that exposure to a concentration of ethanol akin to that occurring naturally during fermentation increased [MOT3+] formation by a factor of 10.They also found that as the cells exposed to ethanol shifted their metabolism to burn surrounding oxygen through respiration, the prions reverted to their non-prion conformation, [mot3-], and the yeast returned to the unicellular state. In essence, prion formation drove a shift to multicellularity, helping the yeast to ride out the ethanol storm.
"What we have in the end is two sequential environmental changes that are turning on a heritable epigenetic element and then turning it off," says Halfmann. "And between those two changes, the prion is causing the cells to acquire a multicellular growth form that we think is actually important for their survival."
Lindquist, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has long argued that prions have played a vital role in yeast evolution and has amassed a body of strong supporting evidence.
"We see them as part of a bet-hedging strategy that allows the yeast to alter their biological properties quickly when their environments turn unfavorable," Lindquist says. She also theorizes that prions may play such roles beyond yeast, and her lab intends to take similar approaches in the hunt for prions and prion-like mechanisms that are potentially beneficial in other organisms.
For Lindquist lab postdoctoral scientist Alex Lancaster, who is also an author of the new Cellpaper, these latest findings hint at a potentially novel approach to understanding basic mechanisms underlying the complexities of human diseases, including cancer, whose hallmarks include protein misfolding, epigenetic alterations, metabolic aberrations, and myriad changes in cell state, type, and function. Lancaster likens the opportunity to that of opening a black box.
"It's exciting to think that this could become another tool in the toolbox in the study of multicellularity," Lancaster says. "We know that some tumors are a heterogeneous population of cells and we know that tumor cells can evolve within in their environments to help ensure their own survival. This system could help us further understand the role of epigenetic inheritance within tumors and how it might be influencing cell-cell interactions and even affecting the effectiveness of drug therapies."
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Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research: http://www.wi.mit.edu/index.html
Thanks to Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research for this article.
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Mar. 29, 2013 ? Mayo Clinic physicians in Arizona have shown that tablet computers can be used to analyze electroencephalogram or EEG results outside of the clinic or hospital. Their study findings were recently presented at the American Academy of Neurology conference in San Diego.
"The fact that this gives doctors the ability to read EEG results from anywhere can only help patients in the long run," says Matthew Hoerth, M.D., a neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
Click here to hear Dr. Hoerth explain the study.
An EEG is a painless procedure that uses electrodes attached to a person's scalp to detect electrical activity in the brain. Brain cells are constantly communicating via electrical impulses, even when someone is asleep. This activity shows up as wavy lines on an EEG recording.
The objective was to determine whether a computer tablet is an acceptable alternative to the traditional laptop for remote EEG interpretation. The findings showed that the tablet cost significantly less and weighed less than the laptop and had a comparable screen resolution. The greatest disadvantage to the tablet compared to the laptop is screen size. Boot-up time was significantly longer for the laptop and desktop. An EEG is one of the main diagnostic tests for epilepsy and may also play a role in diagnosing other brain disorders. The epilepsy division at Mayo Clinic in Arizona interprets EEGs for Mayo Clinic Hospital as well as three other institutions across Arizona, where they have remote access for interpretation to all locations. "With high volumes of EEGs and multiple systems and facilities to read from, the efficiency of technology is essential to many physician practices," says Dr. Hoerth. "Despite the marginally smaller screen size, the ease of use, accessibility, and reliability make the tablet a viable option for its integration into the tele-EEG practice.
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A little research can save you a lot of cash on prescription drugs, according to a secret shopping study by Consumer Reports.
The magazine called more than 200 pharmacies across the country to request retail prices for five best-selling drugs:?The diabetes drug Actos; the antidepressant Lexapro;?the cholesterol-lowering pill Lipitor;?the blood thinner Plavix; and?the asthma treatment,Singulair; all of which are available as generics.
Depending on the pharmacy, costs varied by as much as $749 for a month?s supply of all five drugs.
?A consumer can?t assume that the price of their prescription medications is set in stone,? Lisa Gill, prescription drugs editor for Consumer Reports, said in a statement.
A person without insurance could pay as much as $150 a month for generic Lipitor at CVS, compared to just $17 at Costco, the study found.
?Big-box stores such as Costco and Walmart use the pharmacy as a traffic builder for their stores, whereas traditional chain stores, such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens, make the majority of their revenue and profits from the pharmacy,? Stephen Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmacy economics at the University of Minnesota, wrote in the report.
A spokesman for CVS took issue with the study, telling ABCNews.com in an email that ?pricing surveys do not accurately reflect what most pharmacy customers pay for their prescriptions given various value, discount and third-party insurance programs.?
Independent pharmacies had some good deals, too. But their prices varied widely from $131 to $1,073 for all five drugs.
?One of the big takeaways is that you have to ask for the best price and see if your pharmacist will work with you. Especially for the independent pharmacies, if they want to retain your business and loyalty, they will help you get the best price,? Gill said.
Click here to read the report. And read on for more tips for saving money at the pharmacy:
Go With Generics
Choosing a generic instead of its brand-name relative can save you thousands of dollars a year, according to Gill.
?If your doctor prescribes Lipitor, you may be taking it for the rest of your life.??So it can really pay to shop around,? she said.??Talk to your doctor about lower cost alternatives in the same class of drug. And make sure you have that talk when your doctor is about ready to write the prescription.??Once you?re taking a drug and tolerating it well, your doctor might be less inclined to try alternatives.?
Aim Low
Shoppers?weren?t?always given the lowest price, Consumer Reports found. It never hurts to ask the pharmacist for a better deal.
Ditch the City
Some urban pharmacies had higher prices than rural ones, Consumer Reports found.?A month?s supply of generic Actos at a pharmacy in?Raleigh,?N.C., cost $203 compared to $37 outside the city.
Load Up
Some pharmacies offer discounts on a three-month supply, so ask for a 90-day refill.
Do Your Homework
Big-box drugstores and pharmacy chains offer discount generic-drug programs, which can land you some generics for as little as $4 a month, Consumer Reports found.?Just make sure to check the fine print.
Poultry probiotic cuts its coat to beat bad bacteriaPublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrew Chapple andrew.chapple@ifr.ac.uk 44-016-032-51490 Norwich BioScience Institutes
A strain of probiotic bacteria that can fight harmful bacterial infections in poultry has the ability to change its coat, according to new findings from the Institute of Food Research.
The probiotic is currently being taken forward through farm-scale trials to evaluate how well it combats Clostridium perfringens a cause of necrotic enteritis in poultry and the second most common cause of food poisoning in the UK
The researchers at IFR, which is strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, had previously found that the probiotic Lactobacillus johnsonsii, when given to young chicks, prevents the colonisation of C. perfringens. Now, in research published in the journal PLOS ONE, they have found that the probiotic bacteria have the ability to alter their coat. They speculate that this could be one way in which the probiotic outcompete C. perfringens.
The researchers noticed when examining the bacteria that a small number of them appear smooth. They identified genes responsible for making a special coat, or slime capsule, which the bacteria surround themselves in. This protects the bacteria from stomach acids and bile salts, and helps them come together to form biofilms. It may also protect against drying out when outside the host. The natural appearance of smooth mutants could be a ploy used by the bacteria to introduce variation into its populations, making them able to take advantage of different environments.
By turning off one or more of the coat genes, they could see what effect this had on its ability to stick to gut tissues. "The next step is to understand the regulation of the genes involved in making the coat" said Dr Arjan Narbad, who led the studies. "We want to find out whether changing the coat affects the probiotic's fitness to colonise and inhabit the gut."
This in turn could prevent C. perfringens from colonising the gut. This competitive exclusion could be one reason why the probiotic strain prevents the growth of other harmful bacteria.
Understanding the role of the slime capsule coat will inform the commercial development of this strain as a preventative treatment for C. perfringens infection in poultry, especially in regard to how the probiotic is stored and produced. Through the technology transfer company Plant Bioscience Ltd, the strain has been patented and is now in large-scale farm trials to assess its efficacy. As these bacteria have previously been used in the food chain and are considered safe for human consumption, this probiotic strain could become new way of controlling C. perfringens.
As there is a growing pressure to reduce the use of antibiotics in farming, new products are needed to maintain animal welfare standards, reduce the huge costs of necrosis in poultry and help keep our food safe.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Poultry probiotic cuts its coat to beat bad bacteriaPublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrew Chapple andrew.chapple@ifr.ac.uk 44-016-032-51490 Norwich BioScience Institutes
A strain of probiotic bacteria that can fight harmful bacterial infections in poultry has the ability to change its coat, according to new findings from the Institute of Food Research.
The probiotic is currently being taken forward through farm-scale trials to evaluate how well it combats Clostridium perfringens a cause of necrotic enteritis in poultry and the second most common cause of food poisoning in the UK
The researchers at IFR, which is strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, had previously found that the probiotic Lactobacillus johnsonsii, when given to young chicks, prevents the colonisation of C. perfringens. Now, in research published in the journal PLOS ONE, they have found that the probiotic bacteria have the ability to alter their coat. They speculate that this could be one way in which the probiotic outcompete C. perfringens.
The researchers noticed when examining the bacteria that a small number of them appear smooth. They identified genes responsible for making a special coat, or slime capsule, which the bacteria surround themselves in. This protects the bacteria from stomach acids and bile salts, and helps them come together to form biofilms. It may also protect against drying out when outside the host. The natural appearance of smooth mutants could be a ploy used by the bacteria to introduce variation into its populations, making them able to take advantage of different environments.
By turning off one or more of the coat genes, they could see what effect this had on its ability to stick to gut tissues. "The next step is to understand the regulation of the genes involved in making the coat" said Dr Arjan Narbad, who led the studies. "We want to find out whether changing the coat affects the probiotic's fitness to colonise and inhabit the gut."
This in turn could prevent C. perfringens from colonising the gut. This competitive exclusion could be one reason why the probiotic strain prevents the growth of other harmful bacteria.
Understanding the role of the slime capsule coat will inform the commercial development of this strain as a preventative treatment for C. perfringens infection in poultry, especially in regard to how the probiotic is stored and produced. Through the technology transfer company Plant Bioscience Ltd, the strain has been patented and is now in large-scale farm trials to assess its efficacy. As these bacteria have previously been used in the food chain and are considered safe for human consumption, this probiotic strain could become new way of controlling C. perfringens.
As there is a growing pressure to reduce the use of antibiotics in farming, new products are needed to maintain animal welfare standards, reduce the huge costs of necrosis in poultry and help keep our food safe.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
An anti-rape video posted on the Web with the line, "Real men treat women with respect," has gone viral: So far, it's been viewed over 1.4 million times.
Filmed by University of Oregon sophomore Samantha Stendal, the 26-second video, "A Needed Response," was made in reaction to the Steubenville rape trial in Ohio, which convicted two high-school football players of raping a drunk and passed out 16-year-old girl.
The victim was unconscious during the crime, and in addition to the rape itself, had to endure a response on social media that often made light of the situation.
The online comments, some of which blamed the young woman, outraged Stendal. She told Yahoo! News in an email, "I become frustrated with the constant victim blaming and general rape culture that I saw online. I decided to make a video in order to place something more positive on the internet. I wanted to promote the idea of treating one another like decent human beings."
The short video shows a woman passed out on a couch. A man looks directly into the camera, and whispers, ?Hey bros, check who passed out on the couch. Guess what I'm gonna do to her?"
He then covers the unresponsive woman with a blanket, puts a pillow under her head, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and places a mug beside her. Then he delivers the line, ?Real men treat women with respect.?
Comments to the video on YouTube have spurred discussion. They include one from BJ Lincoln, who writes, ?This is a very cool message. Part of our culture permits rape in many ways and it needs to change. Thank you both for making the message clear.?
User blondegirl214 agreed, ?Glad to see at least one man gets it. All is not lost after all!?
The video has obviously struck a chord with viewers. Stendal told Yahoo! News she is "surprised" by the huge response, and added, "I am happy to see the conversation moving away from victim blaming and changing to how people in vulnerable situations should be treated."
BlackBerry?s (BBRY) fourth-quarter earnings were?a bundle of such extreme opposites that they literally stunned Wall Street.?Many expected huge price swings, but as of 10:27 a.m. on Thursday, the share price is up 1.8%. Investors are having trouble figuring out whether to giggle with glee over the big Z10 shipment number or shriek with horror over the massive subscriber loss.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry lives to fight another day]
This quarter crystallized the theme we wrote about last week: the low-end product range of BlackBerry is collapsing. Despite shipping 1 million Z10 devices ?many analysts expected shipments in the 300,000 to 500,000 range ? the overall device volume was just 6 million, or 900,000 units below consensus. At the same time, the subscriber base situation is worse than practically anyone expected: 2 million subscribers were added in the August quarter, 1 million subscribers were lost in the November quarter and 3 million subscribers were lost in the February quarter.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry turns surprise profit in Q4 despite missing revenue estimates]
The trend is clear. And dreadful. It implies that the emerging market softness is deepening rapidly. The $200 Android QWERTY models from Samsung (005930), Huawei, ZTE and other Asian vendors are tearing into the connective tissue of BlackBerry?s global empire. BlackBerry is now losing about 3.8% of its sub base over a three-month period. The entire ecosystem in countries like South Africa and Philippines is built on high market penetration; that is the lifeblood of BBM. Allowing Android and iOS platforms to gain share means risking a runaway WhatsApp contagion and the loss of relevance in the messaging wars.
BlackBerry turned a surprise profit during the quarter because the ratio of high-end Z10 to low-end Curve phones was much higher than expected. But this happened both because the Z10 shipment was bigger than anticipated, while the low-end device volume was smaller than expected. This does not need to be a problem if BlackBerry starts shipping sub-$300 devices in a month or two.
But if the company is six months from shipping the new Curve line the blood could really flow over this summer. The same happens if the price of the new Curve devices is too high: Markets from Brazil to Nigeria to Malaysia are clearly transitioning to smartphones that are priced at $250 or under. If BlackBerry miscalculates the premium it can command in emerging markets, it?s lights out in Waterloo.
What about the May quarter? The combination of 1 million unit Z10 shipment and 3 million unit subscriber loss was a chilling demonstration of how hard it is for BlackBerry to succeed with luxury devices alone. BlackBerry may not need the U.S. market anymore,?but getting cheap new devices to emerging markets is absolutely vital. Global smartphone sales grew at roughly 35% annualized pace during the February quarter, yet BlackBerry?s sales volume is still shrinking faster than even the bearish Wall Street consensus expected.
This is coming down to a race between how fast the BlackBerry subscriber base is eroding and when the new low-end models finally launch.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
Cancer biologists find DNA-damaging toxins in common plant-based foodsPublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Vanessa Wasta wasta@jhmi.edu 410-614-2916 Johns Hopkins Medicine
Liquid smoke, black and green teas and coffee produced levels of cell DNA damage comparable to chemo drugs
In a laboratory study pairing food chemistry and cancer biology, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center tested the potentially harmful effect of foods and flavorings on the DNA of cells. They found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee activated the highest levels of a well-known, cancer-linked gene called p53.
The p53 gene becomes activated when DNA is damaged. Its gene product makes repair proteins that mend DNA. The higher the level of DNA damage, the more p53 becomes activated.
"We don't know much about the foods we eat and how they affect cells in our bodies," says Scott Kern, M.D., the Kovler Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "But it's clear that plants contain many compounds that are meant to deter humans and animals from eating them, like cellulose in stems and bitter-tasting tannins in leaves and beans we use to make teas and coffees, and their impact needs to be assessed."
Kern cautioned that his studies do not suggest people should stop using tea, coffee or flavorings, but do suggest the need for further research.
The Johns Hopkins study began a year ago when graduate student Samuel Gilbert, working in Kern's laboratory, noted that a test Kern had developed to detect p53 activity had never been used to identify DNA-damaging substances in food.
For the study, published online February 8 in Food and Chemical Toxicology, Kern and his team sought advice from scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture about food products and flavorings. "To do this study well, we had to think like food chemists to extract chemicals from food and dilute food products to levels that occur in a normal diet," he says.
Using Kern's test for p53 activity, which makes a fluorescent compound that "glows" when p53 is activated, the scientists mixed dilutions of the food products and flavorings with human cells and grew them in laboratory dishes for 18 hours.
Measuring and comparing p53 activity with baseline levels, the scientists found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee showed up to nearly 30-fold increases in p53 activity, which was on par with their tests of p53 activity caused by a chemotherapy drug called etoposide.
Previous studies have shown that liquid smoke flavoring damages DNA in animal models, so Kern's team analyzed p53 activity triggered by the chemicals found in liquid smoke. Postdoctoral fellow Zulfiquer Hossain tracked down the chemicals responsible for the p53 activity. The strongest p53 activity was found in two chemicals: pyrogallol and gallic acid. Pyrogallol, commonly found in smoked foods, is also found in cigarette smoke, hair dye, tea, coffee, bread crust, roasted malt and cocoa powder, according to Kern. Gallic acid, a variant of pyrogallol, is found in teas and coffees.
Kern says that more studies are needed to examine the type of DNA damage caused by pyrogallol and gallic acid, but there could be ways to remove the two chemicals from foods and flavorings.
"We found that Scotch whiskey, which has a smoky flavor and could be a substitute for liquid smoke, had minimal effect on p53 activity in our tests," says Kern.
Liquid smoke, produced from the distilled condensation of natural smoke, is often used to add smoky flavor to sausages, other meats and vegan meat substitutes. It gained popularity when sausage manufacturers switched from natural casings to smoke-blocking artificial casings.
Other flavorings like fish and oyster sauces, tabasco and soy sauces, and black bean sauces showed minimal p53 effects in Kern's tests, as did soybean paste, kim chee, wasabi powder, hickory smoke powders and smoked paprika.
###
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (CA62924) and the Everett and Marjorie Kovler Professorship in Pancreas Cancer Research.
In addition to Kern, Gilbert and Hossain, other scientists involved in the research include Kalpesh Patel, Soma Ghosh, and Anil Bhunia from Johns Hopkins.
On the Web:
hopkinscancer.org
Media Contacts: Vanessa Wasta, 410-614-2916
wasta@jhmi.edu
Amy Mone, 410-614-2915
amone@jhmi.edu
March 27, 2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Cancer biologists find DNA-damaging toxins in common plant-based foodsPublic release date: 27-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Vanessa Wasta wasta@jhmi.edu 410-614-2916 Johns Hopkins Medicine
Liquid smoke, black and green teas and coffee produced levels of cell DNA damage comparable to chemo drugs
In a laboratory study pairing food chemistry and cancer biology, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center tested the potentially harmful effect of foods and flavorings on the DNA of cells. They found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee activated the highest levels of a well-known, cancer-linked gene called p53.
The p53 gene becomes activated when DNA is damaged. Its gene product makes repair proteins that mend DNA. The higher the level of DNA damage, the more p53 becomes activated.
"We don't know much about the foods we eat and how they affect cells in our bodies," says Scott Kern, M.D., the Kovler Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "But it's clear that plants contain many compounds that are meant to deter humans and animals from eating them, like cellulose in stems and bitter-tasting tannins in leaves and beans we use to make teas and coffees, and their impact needs to be assessed."
Kern cautioned that his studies do not suggest people should stop using tea, coffee or flavorings, but do suggest the need for further research.
The Johns Hopkins study began a year ago when graduate student Samuel Gilbert, working in Kern's laboratory, noted that a test Kern had developed to detect p53 activity had never been used to identify DNA-damaging substances in food.
For the study, published online February 8 in Food and Chemical Toxicology, Kern and his team sought advice from scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture about food products and flavorings. "To do this study well, we had to think like food chemists to extract chemicals from food and dilute food products to levels that occur in a normal diet," he says.
Using Kern's test for p53 activity, which makes a fluorescent compound that "glows" when p53 is activated, the scientists mixed dilutions of the food products and flavorings with human cells and grew them in laboratory dishes for 18 hours.
Measuring and comparing p53 activity with baseline levels, the scientists found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee showed up to nearly 30-fold increases in p53 activity, which was on par with their tests of p53 activity caused by a chemotherapy drug called etoposide.
Previous studies have shown that liquid smoke flavoring damages DNA in animal models, so Kern's team analyzed p53 activity triggered by the chemicals found in liquid smoke. Postdoctoral fellow Zulfiquer Hossain tracked down the chemicals responsible for the p53 activity. The strongest p53 activity was found in two chemicals: pyrogallol and gallic acid. Pyrogallol, commonly found in smoked foods, is also found in cigarette smoke, hair dye, tea, coffee, bread crust, roasted malt and cocoa powder, according to Kern. Gallic acid, a variant of pyrogallol, is found in teas and coffees.
Kern says that more studies are needed to examine the type of DNA damage caused by pyrogallol and gallic acid, but there could be ways to remove the two chemicals from foods and flavorings.
"We found that Scotch whiskey, which has a smoky flavor and could be a substitute for liquid smoke, had minimal effect on p53 activity in our tests," says Kern.
Liquid smoke, produced from the distilled condensation of natural smoke, is often used to add smoky flavor to sausages, other meats and vegan meat substitutes. It gained popularity when sausage manufacturers switched from natural casings to smoke-blocking artificial casings.
Other flavorings like fish and oyster sauces, tabasco and soy sauces, and black bean sauces showed minimal p53 effects in Kern's tests, as did soybean paste, kim chee, wasabi powder, hickory smoke powders and smoked paprika.
###
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (CA62924) and the Everett and Marjorie Kovler Professorship in Pancreas Cancer Research.
In addition to Kern, Gilbert and Hossain, other scientists involved in the research include Kalpesh Patel, Soma Ghosh, and Anil Bhunia from Johns Hopkins.
On the Web:
hopkinscancer.org
Media Contacts: Vanessa Wasta, 410-614-2916
wasta@jhmi.edu
Amy Mone, 410-614-2915
amone@jhmi.edu
March 27, 2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
Author: Mishel Roserberg | Total views: 167 Comments: 0 Word Count: 837 Date:
SEO is the process where a webmaster tweaks his or her site around to get the highest search engine ranking. It is a massive business and a powerful process. Some Internet marketers might say that SEO is too advanced for the regular site owner. Don't listen to that!
If your site features a large number of videos, remember that search engine crawlers do not see video content, no matter how high it is in quality. In order to achieve better search engine optimization, make a site map that lists all the videos that you have on your website. This makes sure the crawler can grab the text/keyword and trace it to your site and your videos.
If you are contemplating hiring an outside company to do your site's search engine optimization, research carefully before signing on. There are plenty of internet marketing "experts" and SEO "gurus" around who will happily charge huge fees for sub-par work. Read online reviews and testimonials from previous companies to make sure that the company you're looking to hire is the real deal. Your bottom line will thank you.
Talk with an education or non-profit website to see if they will provide a link on their site to content on your site. Any reputable site that links to your website will help you greatly when it comes to ranking with search engines. If you put content that is unique and pertinent to showcase your website, reputable sites will be more apt to feature links to your website. You need to publish information that is high-quality and informational.
Pay-per-click affiliate marketing programs can be very good in increasing business. This is the easiest service to provide to affiliates, so the pay is correspondingly modest, but it can rapidly build up.
Including a site map on your website is key to any search engine optimization process. Spiders can more easily access all of your site through a site map. If it's a large website, it may have to have more than one site map. One map should have less than 100 links.
In order to use search engine optimization to increase your visibility, your website must be well coded. Say you use primarily JavaScript for the content on your site, but you have messy code - indexing it will be difficult for search engine spiders. If you rely heavily on Flash content without text descriptions, your site may simply be ignored by the search engines.
Talk with an education or non-profit website to see if they will provide a link on their site to content on your site. Search engines view back-links to reputable sources favorably, and they will reward your affiliation with them. In order to get reliable websites to feature your website, make sure to always provide accurate information. Add content that these type of organizations find worthy and useful.
Buy a previously used domain name for an immediately higher page rank from the start. Any search engine will give priority to domain names that have been around for over two years. Review lists of recently deleted domains looking for ones that could possibly suit your new site's purpose.
It is extremely important that all of your site's images have a corresponding alt tag. These tags replace images if the image display is disabled by website visitors. The important factor is that search engines read and index alt tags, so keywords included in these tags will improve page ranking.
Many of the same principles of optimizing your business to rank well with search engines are also used for optimizing your business to please your customers. Many new business owners do not realize how important this really is.
Your keyword phrases should appear in your titles too. Your title is your websites first handshake with search engines, so make it friendly and relevant. If you do it this way, the user will click on your website link because it is relevant to what the user was searching for.
It can be tempting to try to utilize every SEO trick out there for your site, but it can backfire on you. Nobody has the time to work on every single SEO technique out there, even if they do it for a living. Just pick the ones that will have the biggest impact and get them down to a science.
Because of variations in search engines, you may achieve good visibility with one search engine, or two, but not all of them at once. Using keywords in your structure and content will still give your site an advantage on most search engines. , Ask. Including their own nuances.
Remember, there just as many ways that search engine optimization can go wrong as there are ways that can tremendously help a website. The aforementioned tips should help you make the most out of search engine optimization.
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1: Understanding Online Business Success
Starting a home based business to earn income online takes a significant amount of time and energy upfront to get things going. Not seeing results immediately can be discouraging and cause people to give up too early. In this article, we look at the process of starting a home based business and working through the frustrations to be there when the sales come flowing in.
2: Why You Need To Build Multiple Streams of Income For Yourself
Being an entrepreneur and earning multiple streams of income is a dream that many have, but in reality it does take some initial hard work to achieve this. Earning multiple streams of income is the wave of the future, and here are some tips and advice for you when you are looking for ways in which to do this for yourself.
3: What is Cyber Marketing And Why It Is So Important For The Success Of Your Website
Cyber marketing has now become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails, and banners.
4: Article Marketing Strategy: Putting Together a "Class Schedule" For Your Article Topics
Businesses go to so much trouble when there is one sure-fire, simple, very inexpensive way to attract new clients to a business: Teach a free class. That is what article marketing is like. Your articles are just like free classes. You teach your target readers something helpful in your article. Your resource box then says, "If you enjoyed this article you can visit my website and apply what you have learned."
5: The Best Way To Optimise Your Website SEO For Google Panda
If you want your SEO to work you now need to concentrate on appeasing Google Panda, and to do this you need to know what Google Panda's spiders/bots will be looking for. Find out here how to search engine optimise your website for the latest Google Panda algorithm, and achieve the success you deserve.
This ad was pulled after various complaints to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
When two high school football players were convicted of raping an intoxicated girl in Steubenville, Ohio, ? after sending pictures of the act to friends and posting about it on social media ? a significant portion of the backlash was aimed at the victim?rather than her attackers.
Even CNN was criticized for empathizing with the two convicted rapists.
It might be the 21st century, but there's still a tendency to?blame the victim,?be it for drinking or wearing a short skirt. The meme of targeting the violated as opposed to the violator has even made it into modern PSAs that are supposed to be anti-domestic violence.
We have collected eight recent ads that imply if a woman drinks or fails to cover up, then she is somehow asking for it.
The most headline-inducing recent example was when the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board released a series of posters showing a woman's legs sprawled on a bathroom floor, underwear at her ankles, with the text, "See what happens when your friends drink too much?" They were later pulled.
We've also found a few anti-rape PSAs that get the message right, so there's hope for progress.
Click here to see 8 anti-rape PSAs that blame the victim >
A photo, toys and candles are placed at a makeshift memorial for slain 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in Brunswick, Ga., Saturday, March 23, 2013. Antonio was shot dead in his stroller on Thursday. (AP Photo/Florida Times-Union, Terry Dickson)
A photo, toys and candles are placed at a makeshift memorial for slain 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in Brunswick, Ga., Saturday, March 23, 2013. Antonio was shot dead in his stroller on Thursday. (AP Photo/Florida Times-Union, Terry Dickson)
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) ? Police in Georgia say an anonymous tip helped them make arrests in the shooting death of baby who was killed in a stroller.
The Brunswick Police Department said Sunday that they got a tip that someone was crouched in the back seat of a vehicle as it drove away from the shooting on Thursday. The Glynn County detective's division spent hours following up on the tip and eventually arrested a 14-year-old suspect. The boy's statements led them to take 17-year-old De'Marquise Elkins into custody.
Elkins is charged with murder in the death of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago. The baby's mother, Sherry West, said she was walking home when Elkins and a younger boy approached and asked her for money.
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Public release date: 27-Mar-2013
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